Category Archives: Social media marketing

I was delighted when B2B Marketing Zone – a website and newsletter that I devour - asked me to be one of 25 contributors to its "B2B Marketing Trends for 2016" e-book.
I love this content concept, and it’s an idea more B2B marketers could adopt. Contact influencers in your market – or even your own customers or subject matter experts – and ask them for short paragraphs on a topic, then combine that content into an e-book.
Then do what Tom Pick and Tony Karrer of B2B Marketing Zone did – make it easy for people to compose posts like this one and share the book through their social networks. Your contributors will be flattered …

By Paul Gillin, January 2016
I was recently contacted by a B2B publication looking for some thoughts on what’s coming up in the next year. I thought some of the questions were interesting and worth sharing here.
What trends are gaining momentum in B2B social media right now?
B2B marketers are finally realizing that merely throwing content into the ether is both expensive and wasteful, so they’re trying to target their content better to the audience and purpose. Marketers realize that buyers are people, not demographic segments, so they are appealing more to the motivations that influence human behavior. That’s one reason we s…

If you’re a savvy marketing leader, you’re already implementing or thinking about implementing an employee advocacy program. Employee advocacy is a popular topic with B2C and B2B marketers these days. It should be. But are your employees doing more harm than good?
What is employee advocacy?
Employee advocacy is not a new concept however the name and the tools to implement it are relatively new. Employee advocacy is empowering your employees to extend your brand’s reach to their network. Not so complicated, right? And thanks to social media and platforms like Dynamic Signal’s, employees can quickly and easily share corporate-appr…

By Paul Gillin, September 28, 2015
With Facebook logging its first billion-user day and LinkedIn closing in on 400 million members, many savvy companies are realizing that their most credible marketing resource – their own employees – are quite literally staring them in the face.
That’s why they’re adopting employee and business partner advocacy programs to tap into the social networks of their own people to spread messages at a grassroots level. But making these programs work isn’t necessarily cheap or simple. Here are some do’s and don’ts to consider if you’re thinking of launching an employee/partner advocacy initiati…

Marketers love the idea of word-of-mouth marketing (WOM ). It’s authentic, trustworthy and often (although not always) inexpensive. The Internet has given new energy to the potential of WOM , but there’s actually nothing new about it. In the days before advertising in mass media, WOM was the only type of marketing.
We’re all familiar with some of the most famous examples of WOM , including Dove’s Real Beauty Sketches and the Cadbury Gorilla. These programs used Internet video to great effect, but there’s no requirement that great WOM demands a Web browser. Here are five common misperceptions about word-of-mouth.
WOM is cheap
Wo…

In the age of social media, getting people to talk to each other about your services or
products is an essential part of any marketing program. The best thing that can happen to you is that your content goes “viral.” But how do you get people to spread the word about your business without asking them?
Word of Mouth Marketing (WOM) Defined
WOM marketing is an unpaid form of promotion by satisfied customers. This means that customers find your information or product remarkable enough to promote it for free across their own social media networks. Because they tell their friends, the message is more credible. And you don’t have to pay th…